People that watch television may want to control a television within their vicinity (or another media player) with a mobile device such as a smartphone or laptop. Yet, a special pairing between two devices may employ a complex registration process that requires explicit access or hardware extensions to force a pairing over channels such as infrared channels. These techniques may require a user to be aware of the pairing and may require coupling hardware that is not inherent to either the television or the mobile device. Additionally, these types of explicit pairings may suffer from susceptibility to distance and different forms of interference, as well as being limited to one-to-one pairing, requiring the mobile device interface to be tied to one and only one television.